Streets of Laredo

by Larry McMurtry

Hardcover, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Simon & Schuster (1993), Edition: 1st, 589 pages

Description

The final book of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy is an exhilarating tale of legend and heroism. Captain Woodrow Call, August McCrae's old partner, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena -- once Gus McCrae's sweetheart. This long chase leads them across the last wild streches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.

User reviews

LibraryThing member choochtriplem

A so-so ending to an amazing series. If you have made it this far in the Lonesome Dove series, don't stop, keep going...Not as good as the others, but still a good ending to Captain Cal's story.

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LibraryThing member silva_44

Having finished the other books in McMurtry's tetraology, I was anxious to read this, the final book. However, I was a bit disappointed at finding Woodrow Call a broken man. I would have much preferred, even if naive, to have let him remain the strong, undaunting hero of the previous books. Without

Gus with which to interact, the book seemed a bit flat, but still a good read.

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LibraryThing member Whiskey3pa

Typically well written and interesting. Nice to see a wrap up of the tale, although it is a little too period correct to be happy. Recomend it if you have read the others, but not as a stand alone read.

LibraryThing member skavlanj

I tried this book because Lonesome Dove is such an incredible read. Should have stopped there.

LibraryThing member co_coyote

This is Larry McMurtry's follow-up to his wonderful book, Lonesome Dove. This book is much slower to get started than the first, and not as satisfying in the end. A good book for a week at the beach, though, which it was for me.

LibraryThing member bookheaven

Very grim, violent book. Sequel to Lonesome Dove. Lacks humor of that book.

LibraryThing member bekkil1977

It's hard to like Call without Gus, he's just not as interesting a person. Gus made him human. And I say that with all the love in the world: Captain Woodrow F. Call in "Lonesome Dove" is one of my all time favorite fictional characters.
Call is back in Texas, the cattle ranch in Montana having

fallen apart. Newt died, which I think contributed to his gloom, although he probably wouldn't admit it. The railroad hires Call to go after Joey Garza, who is robbing rich passengers with impunity. Joey is a bad hombre for sure, even his mother is scared of him. The railroad sends a bookkeeper who is way out of his depth to help him, and Call hires Pea Eye to come along. Pea Eye has married Lorena, of all improbable things, and they have a bunch of little kids and a small farm. Pea goes running when Call summons him, much to Lorena's chagrin. After sitting on it a few days, she decides to go after him and drag her husband home.
It's a very sad book, and I think McMurtry tried to show the difference between Call and Gus in the ending.

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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

This is the perfect ending to the Lonesome Dove series, though I still want to know what happens next to the wonderfully drawn characters. Life is hard in the old west. Some people make it, some people don't and you never know who will or won't or why it happens. No body writes it better than Larry

McMurtry.

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LibraryThing member piemouth

Once again he's set up a story where numerous people are on each other's trail through Texas and Mexico. A couple of them are psychopaths.

LibraryThing member E.J

I am so disappointed I can hardly stand myself. I love Lonesome Dove. Love, love, love. I can't believe this is what follows. I guess I should have reminded myself how much I love Gus and I should have known Call minus Gus does not equal as much love as just Call. The plot isn't bad. The characters

aren't bad. The book isn't bad, in itself. But all the horrors, all the sad sadness just isn't balanced without the humor.

*****Spoiler alert*****

Also why oh why did McMurtry just abandon characters and plot between books? Why kill off Newt when we aren't watching, and shut down the ranch for no real reason before we could see what it's like, and why in heavens marry Lorena and Pea Eye without showing us how that happens? I was wishing the whole book through that I could have read that other book that disappeared before he got to this one. Sigh. I don't even know whether to read the other, now. That makes me sad.

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LibraryThing member RBeffa

Streets of Laredo is billed as the sequel to Lonesome Dove one of the finest novels I have ever read which was turned into one of the finest television series ever made. I've wanted to read this followup novel for a long while and finally I have. Initially I was put off a bit by elements presented

at the beginning of the story, and it colored my reading for a short while. The strength of McMurtry's storytelling pulled me in however. To be brief, this story is set close to 20 years after Lonesome Dove ends and is probably in the mid 1890's. Events and characters during the twenty year gap are given short shrift and what little we are told is rather disturbing because they were rather important elements of the first novel and it feels like they have been tossed aside. It felt like there was another complete book there waiting to be told, but the author doesn't want to tell us that story so he tosses off a few sentences here and there and opens with a rather unexpected arrangement. As I said I did get over it after a while.

Streets contains a couple story arcs. There is a lot of grief, pain and worse in this novel with some really bad 'bad guys' and which carries a melancholy air throughout. This is sad and dark, and the violence is everywhere and seems especially towards women in here. It is rather disturbing, perhaps moreso because it is handed out so matter-of-factly. The new and developing characters are sometimes interesting, sometimes a bore. I suppose it isn't fair to expect it, but the magic that came together in Lonesome Dove didn't happen for me here. This is still excellent storytelling and it turns out to be a good but unhappy story that surprisingly manages a little bit of a happy ending, although McMurtry does his best to throw a downer even on that. Those who want a synopsis of the story can find a reasonably good one on wikipedia, although it will be spoilersville. I wish I could rate this novel higher, because it is well written. Unfortunately it is such a dark thing and I leave it feeling very sad. Mad slasher horror flicks are happier than the darkness and horror here. I feel bruised and beaten down by this book.

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LibraryThing member quondame

If you can find an exhilarating tale of heroism between the covers of this book, as the description proclaims, you've read a different book than I have. A handful of the survivors of Lonesome Dove are on the move in this book through a cold desolation and Call's chase after the murderous young

train robber is no glorious yarn. The women are somewhat better represented than in Lonesome Dove and most of the men are rougher than #1 rasps.

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LibraryThing member ConnieJo

I read Lonesome Dove several years ago, but have been holding off on the sequel. I was afraid that I wouldn't like it nearly as much. Which is true, I didn't, but only because Lonesome Dove is fantastic. Streets of Laredo is still pretty fantastic.

One big change is that the mood is much more

somber. Time has skipped ahead 15 years, and Call is an old man who still rides down bandits. There is much meditation on the evil in men, on the types of dangers that once existed and the ones that still do, life's purpose for a bunch of old men, and apparently, life's place for many other people in general.

Somber, too, because it seems like nothing good ever happens to anybody in this book. One of the cheeriest and most devoted characters in the book meets and evil and senseless end. Maria, the likeable mother of the rather soulless Joey Garza, main villain, seems like she's lived a nearly joyous life at the hands of hard men and her even harder son. In fact, whenever there's a new character, be prepared for a depressing life story or a depressing death scene. Be prepared for that with most characters.

Despite the heaping helpings of depression, this is exactly what I wanted to read right now. It's still a western, and there's still something that appeals to me about the kinds of situations and characters that appeal to me in these types of stories. There's a lot of horrible things that happen in this book, but there's still a happy ending. The characters (mostly) do what they set out to. They all seem to learn about themselves in the process, including Call.

It's hard to say more than that, though. I liked it, but I can't even point to my favorite scenes, because almost all of them are really sad. Most of the humor is in when characters size each other up, then the perspective flips and we see the opinions reversed. Famous Shoes is a great character for levity, but he isn't nearly as lively as Gus, and not even Famous Shoes can bring joy to this story.

Still. Gunfights. Tracking. Long, very cold nights. Men wondering what their purpose is. Train robberies. An out-of-place Yankee that's incredibly loyal. There's a lot to like here, and I enjoyed it immensely.

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LibraryThing member BoundTogetherForGood

This book did not take the trajectory from Lonesome Dove that I had expected and hoped. I was initially shocked and disappointed.

At about halfway through the book, I was finally hooked.

By 3/4 of the way through, I decided I loved the book, just as I had loved Lonesome Dove. McMurtry is a fabulous

writer.

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LibraryThing member KittyCunningham

I am really loving this series. The fact that they aren't in chronological order seemed odd at first, but it works.

LibraryThing member Romonko

Although this book wasn't Lonesome Dove, it was still pretty darn good. I read Lonesome Dove years ago and it is still in my top five books of all time. This one skips ahead quite aways from Lonesome Dove. Woodrow Call is 70 years old, and he is hired by the railway to catch a young killer who is

robbing trains and killing people all over the panhandle. By the time of this book, Pea Eye is married to Lorena and they have five children, but even so Call asks him to accompany him on the hunt. After much debating with himself and his wife, Pea Eyes does catch up with Call, and they are out in the desert during the cold of a Texas winter, looking for a particularly cold-hearted killer by the name of Joey Garza. In typical McMurtry fashion, there is no shortage of bad guys and colourful characters. There is also no shortage of cracking good sub-stories throughout the book. Also, it is no surprise that we get to know the main characters of the book intimately as the plot unfolds. Characterization is only one of McMurtry's writing skills. This time I listened to the audiobook, and I found it particularly entertaining. McMurtry wrote this book after Lonesome Dove, and then after that he wrote two others in the four-book series. Dead Man's Walk is set in the time when Call and Gus McRae were young Texas rangers and Comanche Moon is set sometime between Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. Now that I've finally come back to this best-loved story, I will continue with reading or listening to the other two books. As with Lonesome Dove, this book has left me with a book hangover, and it will take time to get Woodrow Call, Pea Eye and Lorena and Maria Garza out of my mind Maria, by the way is the mother of the outlaw Joey Garza. She's a truly wonderful character in this book. Highly recommend this book, but it would be a good idea to read Lonesome Dove first before tackling this one.

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LibraryThing member comfypants

An old man chases a bandit in the old west.

3/4 (Good).

It has no reason to be so long (the EPILOGUE is 50 pages). There are some great scenes in it, though.

LibraryThing member Craftybilda

I read 'The Lonesome Dove' many years ago and when a friend gave me this one I had to read it. Same style, gruesome in the extreme in the style of the wild West, but a well told story and keeps the pages turning.

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